Gerald Warner is an author, broadcaster, columnist and polemical commentator who writes about politics, religion, history, culture and society in general.

DaveWatch: Crikey! Look at what is happening to the Vichy Tories in the real polls

If you reacted to Alistair Darling’s pathetic apology for a pre-Budget report by consoling yourself with the thought “Never mind, six months from now we’ll have a Tory government”, you were living in a fool’s paradise, for two reasons. The first, blatantly obvious, reason is that a Vichy Tory government under Dave would simply be more of the same – Blue Labour. The other, less immediately evident, reason is that the prospects of a Vichy Tory regime are, if anything, receding.

When I blogged at the end of last week about Dave’s double whammy – down in the opinion polls and down in the real (local government by-election) polls, I was focusing chiefly on the Petainistes’ 37 per cent in the Ipsos MORI poll and the terrible drubbing they received in the Dane Valley, North Thanet council by-election and related contests. These little hiccoughs did not make them look like a government in waiting.

Then, last weekend, the sun came out again for Dave. An ICM poll put the Tories back on the crucial 40 per cent they absolutely must attain. On such a showing they could reckon on an overall majority of 20 to 25 seats. Cue balloons and streamers in Wisteria Mansions, get Dave’s Bullingdon tail-coat out of storage… Oh, frabjous day! Alas for hubris. A couple of days later a Populus poll saw Dave slither back down a snake to 38 per cent and a hung parliament. More ominously, this Populus survey meant that eight of the 12 polls published since early November have put the Tories below 40 per cent.

But all that is as nothing, compared to what is happening to the Vichy Tories in real polls, the local council by-elections that regularly occur. As I pointed out last week, in North Thanet last Thursday the Tory vote plummeted by 20 per cent. So, what does the broader picture show? It shows a landscape to which, in Conservative HQ terms, only the brush of Hieronymus Bosch could do justice: an electoral nightmare for Dave.

Consider all the local council by-elections that have taken place since the massive European/County Councils general election of last June, in England and Wales, that is to say since 2 July. During that period the Conservatives have defended 37 seats, of which they have lost 14. That appalling record has been partially offset by seven gains, but at least two of these were freakish situations involving Independent or BNP councillors. The 14 losses out of just 37 seats defended over five months hardly reflects a party marching irresistibly to office. Translate that into parliamentary seats and reflect.

If the popular impression of the Tories as inevitably the next government had any basis in fact, they should have been picking up far more seats than they lost. That has not happened: the reverse has occurred. Dave’s Vichy Tories are attracting, in the short term, disillusioned Labour voters, Liberal Democrats, a few Greens, floating voters and every kind of electoral flotsam and jetsam to make a reasonable show in the opinion polls – possibly to put Dave into Number 10 for five inglorious years.

Just one element is absent from his big tent: genuine, principled Tories. They are decamping to smaller parties and they won’t be back so long as Dave and his gang are in charge. Dave’s tree-hugging adherence to the Copenhagen scam will be the last straw for many more. Cameron has killed Conservatism.